Council Has to Buy New Lorries to Handle Wheelie Bins

Thursday, 21 June 2018 10:06:38 Europe/London

Council Has to Buy New Lorries To Handle Wheelie Bins

A Leicestershire council has been forced to hire bin lorries because the lorries it already has aren’t equipped to collect its new wheelie bins.

Oadby and Wigston Borough Council announced last month that they were introducing new wheelie bins for recycling collections, just weeks after they announced a new recycling bags scheme. The council has ordered the new vehicles but they will not be available until September. The wheelie bins are expected to cost £550,000 to introduce and they should last 10 years, whereas the bags would have cost £360,000 per year.

The council say that the cost of hiring the lorries is within their budget for the purchase of vehicles, which is a good job, since they were told in April that Leicestershire county council was withdrawing the money they currently give them to run their recycling scheme.

Other councillors have voiced their criticism, saying that because the council have needed to hire lorries, it proves that the decision to introduce new bins was rushed and poorly thought out. They feel that they, and other residents haven’t been listened to.

Leicestershire County Council said it works closely with the councils in the various districts to make sure that their recycling systems are cost-effective. It said that they have been discussing recycling services and budget cuts over the past few years with district councils so that they had time to adapt their waste collection services if they needed to.

District councils get to decide how they collect waste, whether that’s via a kerbside collection service or recycling banks, whereas county councils are responsible for disposing of the waste collected by the district councils. They also give the district councils direction on where they should take their recyclables.

Oadby and Wigston Borough Council have confirmed that their refuse teams will continue to collect the current recycling bags until residents receive their bin. The wheelie bins are expected to be rolled out from June 18th to the middle of July.